trate is alleged to be unduly made, the only tribunal to which the complainant can appeal is that of the GoD of battles, the only process by which the appeal can be carried on is that of a civil and intestine war. An hereditary succession is therefore now established in this and most other countries, in order to prevent that periodical bloodshed and misery which the history of ancient imperial Rome, and the more modern experience of Poland and Germany may show us are the consequences of elective kingdoms.' (B. I., 192, 3.)

Counting the doctrine of the divine right of kings' to be wild and absurd,' he indulges in several epigrammatic sentences upon that head :

And it is no wonder that a prince [James I.] of more learning than wisdom, who could deduce an hereditary title for more than eight hundred years, should easily be taught by the flatterers of the times, to believe there was something divine in this right, and that the finger of PROVIDENCE was visible in its preservation.' And after alluding to a statute of Parliament in the reign of that monarch :

'Not a word here of any right immediately derived from HEAVEN ; which, if it existed anywhere, must be sought for among the aborigines of the island, the ancient Britons, among whose princes, indeed, some have gone to search it for him.' (B. I., 208, 9.)

In the chapter treating of the King's Prerogative,' after a train of ingenious and eloquent reasoning to the effect that the king can do no wrong,' but that oppressions spring from some branch of the sovereign power, he treats of the appropriate remedies for unusual wrongs:

'Indeed, it is found by experience, that whenever the unconstitutional oppressions, even of the sovereign power, advance with gigantic strides, and threaten desolation to a state, mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity; nor will sacrifice their liberty by a scrupulous adherance to those political maxims, which were originally established to preserve it.'

And checking his speculations with a reverential observance of the proprieties of the subject, he concludes:

But it is not for us to say that any one, or two, of these ingredients, would amount to such a situation, [virtual abdication ;] for there our precedent would fail us. In these, therefore, or other circumstances, which a fertile imagination may furnish, since both law and history are silent, it becomes us to be silent too; leaving to future generations, whenever necessity and the safety of the whole shall require it, the exertion of those inherent though latent powers of society, which no climate, no time, no constitution, no contract, can ever destroy or diminish.' (B. I., 245.)

And in the passage treating of the king's prerogative of making war and peace, we find a sentence or two which may be commended to our modern 'fillibusters.'

Whatever hostilities therefore may be committed by private citizens, the state ought not to be affected thereby unless that should justify their proceedings, and thereby become partner in the guilt. Such unauthorized volunteers in violence are not ranked among open enemies, but are treated like pirates and robbers; according to that rule of the

civil law, hostes bi sunt qui nobis, aut quibu snos, publice bellum decrevimus: cæteri latrones aut prædones sunt.' (B. I., 257.)

The extracts which follow are written in a less didactic and pleasanter vein than the preceding ones. In some, indeed, we may fancy the grave lecturer smiling behind his hand, or with his finger alongside his nose winking blandly upon the young limbs' assembled around him. In speaking of the king's ecclesiastical revenues, he thus alludes to the occasional unwarrantable uses of them in former times:

'Our ancient kings, and particularly William Rufus, were not only remarkable for keeping the bishoprics a long time vacant, for the sake of enjoying the temporalities, but also committed horrible waste on the woods and other parts of the estate; and to crown all, would never, when the see was filled up, restore to the bishop his temporalities again, unless he purchased them at an exorbitant price.' (B. I., 282, 3.)

In the part relating to the king's revenue from wrecks, the following distinction is observed:

'It is to be observed, that in order to constitute a legal wreck, the goods must come to land. If they continue at sea, the law distinguishes them by the barbarous and uncouth appellations of jetsam, flotsam, and ligan. These three are therefore accounted so far a distinct thing from the former, that by the king's grant to a man of wrecks, things jetsam, flotsam, and ligan will not pass.' (B. I., 292.)

Here is a whimsical definition of waifs.

'Waifs, bona waviata, are goods stolen, and waved or thrown away by the thief in his flight, for fear of being apprehended. These are given to the king by the law, as a punishment upon the owner, for not himself pursuing the felon, and taking away his goods from him. Waved goods do also not belong to the king, till seized by some body for his use; for if the party robbed can seize them first, though at the distance of twenty years, the king shall never have them.' (B. I., 296, 7.)

Dickens, in his 'Last Cabman,' and other writings, has shown us the 'vip' of the present day but when we learn from Blackstone, that his distinguishing qualities are hereditary, and 'bred in the bone,' our admiration of his eccentricities is lost in sorrow at this new proof of the unalterableness of human nature :

This revenue [from hackney-coach and chair licenses] is governed by commissioners of its own, and is, in truth, a benefit to the subject; as the expense of it is felt by no individual, and its necessary regulations have established a competent jurisdiction, whereby a very refractory race of men may be kept in some tolerable order.' (B. I., 326.) But the under-sheriffs and bailiffs far exceeded their humbler contemporaries in the nicer shades of moral turpitude.

These salutary regulations are shamefully evaded, by practising in the names of other attorneys, and putting in sham deputies by way of nominal under-sheriffs: by reason of which, says Dalton, the undersheriffs and bailiffs do grow so cunning in their several places, that they are able to deceive, and it may well be feared that many of them do deceive both the king, the high-sheriff, and the country.' (B. I., 345.) Here is a bit of etymology not be to found in the Study of Words by Mr. Trench, or any similar book:

But, as these [bailiffs of hundreds] are generally plain men, and not thoroughly skilful in this latter part of their office, that of serving writs, and making arrests and executions, it is now usual to join special bailiffs with them; who are generally mean persons, employed by the sheriffs on account only of their adroitness and dexterity in hunting and seizing their prey. The sheriff being answerable for the misdemeanors of these bailiffs, they are therefore usually bound in an obligation with sureties, for the due execution of their office, and thence are called bound-bailiffs; which the common people have corrupted into a much more homely appellation.' (B. I., 345, 6.)

In those days the duties of the coroner were multifarious and responsible. One branch of his office was to inquire concerning shipwrecks.' Another is thus quaintly described:

Concerning treasure-trove, he is also to inquire who were the finders, and where it is, and whether any one be suspected of having found and concealed a treasure; and that may be well perceived (saith the old statute of Edward I.) where one liveth riotously, haunting taverns, and hath done so of long time;' whereupon he might be attached, and held to bail, upon this suspicion only.'

In observance of the requirements of the feudal constitution, which was introduced in England upon the Norman conquest, 'the lands in the kingdom were divided into what were called knights' fees, in number above sixty thousand; and for every knight's fee a knight or soldier, miles, was bound to attend the king in his wars, for forty days in a year; in which space of time, (says Blackstone, with a tinge of sarcasm,) before war was reduced to a science, the campaign was generally finished, and a kingdom either conquered or victorious.' As an edifying comment upon the text, that rare wit, Chitty, says, in a note: Wo frequently read of half a knight, or other aliquot part; as, for so much land three knights and a half, etc., were to be returned; the fraction of a knight was performed by a whole knight who served half the time, or other due proportion of it.' Overcome by the exquisite humor of this remark, we may imagine the worthy annotator on the confines of apoplexy, with a martyr-like resignation depicted in his purple visage. That sly wag allows his spirits to carry him away in one other place. It is in his extended note after the first section of the Introduction. In some advice to students he says:

'It is a prevailing notion, that an attendance upon the courts during the sittings in term and at nisi prius, is indispensable to the complete education of the law-student; but this may be very safely postponed till he is well acquainted with the general principles and practice of the law, especially as, unless he is singularly fortunate, he will have sufficient time for this mode of improvement after he is called to the bar.' After this unfeeling joke, who could wish to read further of Chitty? Let us return to the genial pleasantries of our author. In enumerating the immunities of corporate bodies he reveals to us the origin of the apothegm that Corporations have no souls :'

Neither can a corporation be excommunicated; for it has no soul, as is gravely observed by Sir Edward Coke!' (B. I., 477.) Some hard winking there! And it is not too much to fancy a subdued chuckle,

upon the enunciation of the third requisite to make a 'tenancy by the curtesy of England :'

3. The issue must be born alive. Some have had a notion that it must be heard to cry; but that is a mistake. Crying indeed is the strongest evidence of its being born alive; but it is not the only evidence.' (B. II., 127.)

After having said that 'a seizin in law of the husband will be as effectual as a seizin in deed, in order to render the wife dowable,' and that if the land abides in the husband for the interval of but for a single moment, it seems that the wife shall be endowed thereof,' he illustrates the law by this curious anecdote :

'This doctrine was extended very far by a jury in Wales, where the father and son were both hanged in one cart, but the son was supposed to have survived the father, by appearing to struggle longest; whereby he became seized of an estate in fee by survivorship, in consequence of which seizin his widow had a verdict for her dower.' (B. II., 132.) Here, leaving his youthful auditors plunged in a sea of emotions, painful, ludicrous, or whimsical, we may suppose the learned doctor to have paused and taken a glass of water.

Here, too, I will pause, and leave my blessing with the patient reader; who, if this essay shall have determined him to purchase the work in whose praise it was written, will never cease to thank me.

JACQUES MAURICE.

THE CONFIDENTIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE WITH HIS BROther JoSEPH, SOMETIME KING OF SPAIN. In two volumes: pp. 760. New-York: D. AppleTON AND COMPANY.

NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA: or, Interesting Anecdotes and Remarkable Conversations of the EMPEROR, during the Five-and-half Years of his Captivity. By JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. With Illustrations. In one volume: pp. 662. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THE first of the above-named works contains a translation of all the Letters and Orders of NAPOLEON published in the Memoirs of King JOSEPH. Added to these are a few letters of NAPOLEON'S, taken from other sources, and a few not written by NAPOLEON himself, but which are of value from their intrinsic interest, or as explanatory of portions of his autographic correspondence. It is wonderful to see, with every new revelation of NAPOLEON'S character, how his genius rises to the loftiest standard. We venture to say, that to the careful student of history, in the NAPOLEONIC era, these volumes will elevate their subject higher in popular estimation than all the mere eulogies, which from first to last have been written of him. His forecast, his prescience of coming events, his genius in conceiving, and his boldness and rapidity in carrying out his great plans, in which nations were his play-things, have nowhere been more forcibly represented, than in the letters and orders embodied in these two volumes. We make two extracts only, but the reader will not fail to observe how perfectly characteristic they are of the 'Great CAPTAIN.' The first finds him in the Imperial Palace of Schönbrunn, master of Vienna, and preparing for the battle of Wagram. The letter is dated from the Palace, October the tenth, 1809, and is addressed to ' M. le Général CLARKE,' probably an uncle of ours. ('O my prophetic soul! —my uncle !'- HAMLET :)

'M. LE GENERAL CLARKE: I wish you to write to the KING of SPAIN to impress upon him that nothing can be more contrary to the rules of war than to publish the strength of his army, either in orders of the day, in proclamations, or in the newspapers; that when he has occasion to speak of his strength, he ought to render it formidable by exaggeration, doubling or trebling his numbers; and that, on the other hand, when he mentions the strength of the enemy, he should diminish it by one-half or one-third; that in war moral force is every thing; that the KING deviated from this principle when he said that he had only 40,000 men and the insurgents 120,000; that to represent the